Stop the Attack on Gaza EMERGENCY DEMO @ Israeli Embassy

Please take to the streets tomorrow (Thursday) to protest this outrageous attack on the already besieged Palestinian population in Gaza. We must demand an end to such actions and that our government and the international community take meaningful concrete steps to end Israeli impunity once and for all.

Today Israel launched what it termed ‘Operation Pillar of Cloud’ on the population of Gaza. In reality this is just the continuation of a week of military assaults on Gaza which in total have left at least 16 people dead, including 5 children, and scores wounded. Today alone, reportedly at least 9 people were killed, including 2 children. An Israeli military spokesperson said this is was the beginning of a “widespread campaign” on Gaza.

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The wreckage of the apartment block in the southern Israeli city of Kiryat Malachi hit by a Hamas rocket. Three people were killed in the explosion because they did not make it to the building’s fortified stairwell.

Israelis will pay a high price for the murder of Palestinian children.

With an election around the corner the Israeli terrorist state murder innocent children. Four years ago before another election the Israeli State did exactly the same thing and murdered over a thousand innocent civilians and children and illegally used chemical warfare against a civilian population. The strategy of bombing Gaza does not make Israel safer. Its an election stunt by a terroist regime. All trade between the EU and Israel should be stopped immediately.

We need tough eu sanctions on Israel and a no fly zone to protect Palestinian civilians!
the Israelis have both chemical and nuclear weapons and have used illegal white phosphorous on civilian populations before.

we need regime change of this bellicose Israeli government. We should supply high tech weapons to dissidents in israel, control the media propaganda message across most tv channels to present Israel in a terrible light and foment dissent among the population to bring change and netenyahu must go at all costs.

A rocket has hit Tel Aviv. The sound of an explosion and air raid sirens were heard throughout the city. There are no reports of injuries or damage. It was the second rocket to land in the greater Tel Aviv area on Thursday.

A siren warning residents of incoming rockets was heard in the Tel Aviv area at around 6:45pm on Thursday. An explosion was reportedly heard shortly after.

RT correspondent Tom Barton said he heard the sirens and the explosion while reporting from central Tel Aviv.

“The sirens sounded, much to our disbelief. We didn’t expect sirens to be heard this far away from Gaza. It’s never happened before,” he said.

Today marks the first time air raid sirens were set off in Tel Aviv since the 1991 Gulf War.

A BBC journalist in Gaza, Jihad Misharawi, also lost two children in the Israeli terrorism.

One, Omar, aged 11 months, died of severe burns, and his elder brother Ali, aged four years, was critically injured.

But true to its history of pro-Israeli reporting, the BBC took its time to report this, leaving it to other media, such as the Telegraph, to run the story first. Instead, the BBC chose to lead with the report that three Israelis had been killed in retaliatory rocket fire from Gaza, downgrading the news of dead Palestinian children, pregnant women and other civilians.

Sir, – Israel did not “begin... the attacks with an air strike that killed the Hamas military commander” (Mark Weiss, November 15th), but with an unprovoked assault on Gaza on November 8th, in which a 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed while playing soccer.

Prime minister Netanyahu’s statement that “while the militant groups deliberately target innocent civilians, Israel makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties” should not be quoted without critical comment. Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment has (as I write) killed at least two children and critically wounded at least 10. Gaza is the most densely populated area on earth; Israel’s assault on the Strip in 2008-9 resulted in up to 1,000 Palestinian civilian fatalities.

Netanyahu’s claim that “no country would put up with continuous rocket fire on its civilian population and Israel was no different” should have been balanced with clarification that Gaza is under an illegal Israeli siege, and that while rocket fire from Gaza is far from “continuous”, the Israeli embargo that starves its population most certainly is. Mr Weiss should have clarified that “targeted assassinations” are deemed illegal by many authorities on international law, and hence Israel’s threat of their “resumption” (as if they had ever wholly ceased) is itself criminal.

The one pertinent point in Mr Weiss’s report is that “it is likely that electoral considerations played a role in Mr Netanyahu’s decision to launch the latest offensive . . .” In Israel the willingness to slaughter Palestinian children is an infallible vote-winner. – Yours, etc,

I imagine I am not the only one who feels the need to vomit when Israel’s Goebbels justifies the Zionist state’s ferocious and monstrously disproportionate attacks by air and sea on the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip, the prison camp which is home to 1.5 million besieged and mainly impoverished Palestinians. The Israeli to whom I am referring is Australian-born Mark Regev, the prime minister’s spokesman, for which read spin doctor. The more I see and hear him in action, the more it seems to me that he makes Nazi Germany’s propaganda chief look like an amateur. In the Observer on Jun 6 2010, Ruth Sutherland wrote:

If the men from Mars ever wanted to manufacture a PR man, they would model their robot on Regev. No matter how formidable the interviewer, or how aggressive the questioning, he never buckles under pressure. He calls interviewers ‘Sir’ and uses phrases like ‘I beg to disagree.’ His disarming Aussie accent and unfailing politeness almost lull listeners into overlooking his aggression. He is always regretful about death and horror. He regrets that the non-Israeli victims brought their fate on themselves. Viewers are reduced to a trance of slack-jawed amazement at what he is prepared to say with a straight face. He is unlikely to win sceptics to Israel’s cause, but as a PR performer he is horribly compelling.

Compelling he certainly is but as Sutherland indicated only to Westerners, and USAians in particular, who have been conditioned for decades by Zionist propaganda and as a consequence know nothing or little worth knowing about the truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel. In the immediate aftermath of Israel’s targeted assassination of Hamas military commander Ahmed al-Jabari, Regev was at his best. Via the BBC and many other networks his main message to the Western nations was that Israel is just like them: democratic and civilized. He said:

I would ask them all: how would you act?

By obvious implication he was saying something very like:

You would take all necessary action against the terrorists to defend and protect your people, and that’s why I am sure you will understand and support what we are doing.

The flaw in that presentation is that Israel is not like the Western nations. It is a brutal occupying power, and the cause of the incoming rockets is its occupation and on-going colonization and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and its blockade of the Gaza Strip. That plus the fact that Israel’s leaders have no interest in peace on terms the Palestinians could accept.

"Yesterday morning, hours before Israel assassinated Ahmed Jaabari, my counterpart in Hamas presented the draft to Jaabari and to other Hamas leaders. Senior Hamas leaders on the outside had already seen it and had instructed him to check the reactions to it in Gaza. I was supposed to receive the draft yesterday evening to present to Israeli officials who were waiting for me to send it to them.

That option is now off the table. Jaabari is dead and so is the chance for a mutually beneficial long term ceasefire understanding."

""Hours before Israel assassinated Hamas Member Ahmed Jabari, he received the draft of a permanent truce agreement with Israel, which included mechanisms for maintaining the cease-fire in the case of a flare-up between Israel and the factions in the Gaza Strip.

This, according to Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin, who helped mediate between Israel and Hamas in the deal to release Gilad Shalit and has since then maintained a relationship with Hamas leaders."

========

Israel doesn't want peace - never has never will - a Nation State composed mainly of Religious fundamentalists and fascist Military-fetishists cannot thrive in peaceful times

I notice that nearly all the Left Wing organizations in Ireland are outraged by bombing of civilians in Gaza this week. Only a couple of weeks ago, the same thing was happening in Bani Walid. We heard barely a squeak of complaint from these same organisations. Indymedia,ie was one of the only Irish sites that highlighted the plight of the civilians of Bani Walid. Why is that? One might suspect that its just that Irish Leftists are already geared up to hate Zionism, but they are confused about Libya. After all, many of these organisations supported the so called "rebels" who were using chemical weapons against civilians in Bani Walid.

The IDF says it knew there were foreign media at least in one of the two buildings they bombed overnight. However it stressed that the journalists were not target of the attack, a spokesperson told BBC.

An Israeli airstrike on a media compound has injured at least six journalists, Palestinian medical authorities say. Among the outlets damaged are local, Italian, German, Lebanese and Kuwaiti channels. RT's office in Gaza was affected too.

The journalists received minor to moderate injuries, Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said. One journalist had his leg amputated following the attack, he added.

Two buildings of a media center in Gaza City were targeted by Israeli warplanes early on Sunday in a series of strikes. Witnesses reported that the journalists had evacuated after an initial attack, which was followed by at least two more hits. The buildings were heavily damaged.

Some of the victims are employees of Palestinian Ma’an news agency , while the man who lost his leg is a cameraman with the local al-Quds TV, Ma’an reports. The attack was focused on the 11th floor, where the office of al-Quds TV is located.

Iranian Press-TV reported that one of their cameramen was injured.

Smoke billows as debris flies from the explosion at the local Al-Aqsa TV station in Gaza City on November 18, 2012 after it was attacked during an Israeli airstrike. An Israeli air strike hit a Gaza City media building.(AFP Photo / Marco Longari)

Rarely has a letter to the Irish Times had more demonstrable falsehoods per word than Raymond Deane's letter on the Gaza war that's quoted above. Let's itemise them:

Gaza is the most densely populated area on earth No, it's not. Doesn't even come close. Gaza has just under 10000 inhabitants per square mile. That's a lot but Macau has over 7 times as many. Monaco's population densty is 4 times that of Gaza and Singapore's is almost double Gaza's. The Israeli city of Tel Aviv has a population density of 20000 inhabitants per square mile, again double that of Gaza. These facts can easily be checked but accuracy doesn't seem to matter when an anti-Israel point is being made.

Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment Wrong again. Israel's bombardment is far from indiscriminate. It is in fact highly discriminating with very precise selection of targets. Take the pinpoint accurate missile strike that eliminated Hamas's military commander - could there possibly be an example of a less indiscrimate attack than that. Just apply a little common sense. here - if Israel wanted to maximize the death toll in Gaza it could do so easily with the weaponry at its disposal. It rightly makes no attempt to do this and concentrates its military force on military targets. The vast majority of the time this is successful. Occasionally there is an error, but when Israel kills innocent civilains, this is an unintended outcome. When Hamas kills innocent civilians, this is celebrated as a success.

the Israeli embargo that starves its population most certainly is ... (continuous) It's a blockade, anyway, not an embargo, but we'll leave that minor terminological inaccuracy aside. The ONLY items that Israel blockades are armaments (for reasons that are all too obvious) and certain chemical, metallurgical and construction materials that are capable of dual cviilain and military use. Even then, such material can be received directly by international NGO/UN relief organisations within Gaza for genuine civilian purposes. Since June 2010, there is NO blockade of food, medicine, childrens toys, musical instruments or clothes despite well publicized flotillas setting sail for Gaza with such items. There is cdrtainly no blockade, continuous or otherwise, that "starves" the population of Gaza.

Israel did not “begin... the attacks with an air strike that killed the Hamas military commander” (Mark Weiss, November 15th), but with an unprovoked assault on Gaza on November 8th, in which a 12-year-old Palestinian boy was killed while playing soccer. It wasn't "unprovoked." Israeli soldiers were investigating a cache of explosives in a tunnel next to the security fence between Israel and Gaza when they came under fire. The boy who was playing over 1km away was killed by a stray shot - whether from Israelis or Palestinian militants is unclear.

Israel’s assault on the Strip in 2008-9 resulted in up to 1,000 Palestinian civilian fatalities.
Hamas Interior minister Fathi Hammad and the IDF agree that about 700 of the 1385 Palestinian fatalities were combatants. Given their apparent unaminity, this seems more credible than Deane's suggestion of up to 1000.

targeted assassinations” are deemed illegal by many authorities on international law, and hence Israel’s threat of their “resumption” (as if they had ever wholly ceased) is itself criminal. The killing, during war, of an opposing military leader is hardly illegal or contrary to the laws of war. If it was where would that leave the targeted assassination of of Reinhard Heydrich, SS officer and architect of the Holocaust by Czech partisans in 1942. Hamas openly declares itself to be at war with Israel and therefore the killing (or assassination) of its military commanders is a legitimate act of war.

I make that 6 clear demonstrable errors in a very short letter. Is this a record? Ireland's august paper of record should have known better. But then, truth is the first casualty of war on Israel.

There is no way to hide the massive dis-proportionality of Israeli violence, so the main media theme is that somehow the poor likkle Israelis are constantly reacting to Palestinian violence, which is an outright lie:

a 2009 study by an MIT professor revealed, “[I]t is overwhelmingly Israel that kills first after a pause in the conflict.”

The study found, “79% of all conflict pauses were interrupted when Israel killed a Palestinian, while only 8% were interrupted by Palestinian attacks (the remaining 13% were interrupted by both sides on the same day).

In addition, the researchers stated, “…of the 25 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than a week, Israel unilaterally interrupted 24, or 96%, and it unilaterally interrupted 100% of the 14 periods of nonviolence lasting longer than 9 days.

The Zionist plan was always to expel Arabs and steal their land, - everything else is just a smokescreen to obscure their real aims - they even used to openly admit this before the Zionist State came into being.

Vladimir Jabotinsky was one of the leading and most influential of the earlier Zionists. The Jewish Terrorist gangs, Stern/Hagannah/Irgun etc, that were responsible for the attempted genocide of Palestinians from 1948 onward, now known as the Nakba, were followers of Jabotinsky's' ideology.

Jabotinsky was an admirer of Mussolini and also borrowed much of his philosophy from the NAZI's themselves.

Some of us imagined that a misunderstanding had occurred, that because the Arabs did not understand our intentions, they opposed us, but, if we were to make clear to them how modest and limited our aspirations are, they would then stretch out their arms in peace. This too is a fallacy that has been proved so time and again. I need recall only one incident. Three years ago, during a visit here, Sokolow delivered a great speech about this very “misunderstanding,” employing trenchant language to prove how grossly mistaken the Arabs were in supposing that we intended to take away their property or expel them from the country, or to suppress them. This was definitely not so. Nor did we even want a Jewish state. All we wanted was a regime representative of the League of Nations. A reply to this speech was published in the Arab paper Al Carmel in an article whose content I give here from memory, but I am sure it is a faithful account.

Our Zionist grandees are unnecessarily perturbed, its author wrote. There is no misunderstanding. What Sokolow claims on behalf of Zionism is true. But the Arabs already know this. Obviously, Zionists today cannot dream of expelling or suppressing the Arabs, or even of setting up a Jewish state. Clearly, in this period they are interested in only one thing – that the Arabs not interfere with Jewish immigration. Further, the Zionists have pledged to control immigration in accordance with the country's absorptive economic capacity. But the Arabs have no illusions, since no other conditions permit the possibility of immigration.

The editor of the paper is even willing to believe that the absorptive capacity of Eretz Israel is very great, and that it is possible to settle many Jews without affecting one Arab. “Just that is what the Zionists want, and what the Arabs do not want. In this way the Jews will, little by little, become a majority and, ipso facto, a Jewish state will be formed and the fate of the Arab minority will depend on the goodwill of the Jews. But was it not the Jews themselves who told us how ‘ pleasant’ being a minority was? No misunderstanding exists. Zionists desire one thing – freedom of immigration – and it is Jewish immigration that we do not want.”

The logic employed by this editor is so simple and clear that it should be learned by heart and be an essential part of our notion of the Arab question. It is of no importance whether we quote Herzl or Herbert Samuel to justify our activities. Colonization itself has its own explanation, integral and inescapable, and understood by every Arab and every Jew with his wits about him. Colonization can have only one goal. For the Palestinian Arabs this goal is inadmissible. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible.

...

Thus we conclude that we cannot promise anything to the Arabs of the Land of Israel or the Arab countries. Their voluntary agreement is out of the question. Hence those who hold that an agreement with the natives is an essential condition for Zionism can now say “no” and depart from Zionism. Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy.

If it were really the rockets then there would be few if any civilian deaths in the West Bank

But in any average year the figure for West Bank civilian dead is almost the same as that for Gazan civilian dead. And there are no rockets emanating from the West bank But don't fret - there'll be a Zio-Nazi apologist along soon with an attempt to provide a separate different justification for WB civilian deaths soon I'm sure.

The rockets are just an excuse - if they did not exist another excuse would be found - one thing you can always be sure of with Zio-Nazis, and their apologists, is that some excuse will always be found to justify killing Palestinian men women and children

They flagrantly broke the partition agreement that they were supposed to have accepted and they get a free pass because "the Arabs made them do it."#

The Arabs also apparently made them expel the Palestinians which incidentally led to the result they were after, a Jewish demographic state.

And of course there are many Zio-Nazi apologists that might claim that if the Arabs accepted partition without any resistance (or alternately, accepted unlimited immigration sans partition), the Yishuv would have dropped their demand for a Jewish state, even though that is why they went to Palestine in the first place.

The Zionist settlers have no moral responsibility for their own actions because they believe they have an unconditional right to what they want damn the consequences for anyone else.

Jabotinsky again:

Two brief remarks: In the first place, if anyone objects that this point of view is immoral, I answer: It is not true; either Zionism is moral and just or it is immoral and unjust. But that is a question that we should have settled before we became Zionists. Actually we have settled that question, and in the affirmative.

We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or not.

There is no other morality.

Of course this can be expanded to killing Palestinians by air (rockets made us do it), killing pregnant women at checkpoints (suicide bombers made us do it), demolishing houses on either side of the Green Line (Leprechauns made us do it) etc etc etc ad infinitum

Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment "Wrong again. Israel's bombardment is far from indiscriminate. It is in fact highly discriminating with very precise selection of targets. Take the pinpoint accurate missile strike that eliminated Hamas's military commander - could there possibly be an example of a less indiscrimate attack than that"

Ok then.

The current facts on the ground are that 100+ people have been killed by IDF.
50% of those have been women and children.

Sooooo.... If what contrarian says about pinpoint accuracy and "highly discriminating with very precise selection of targets" above is true then the only logical conclusions I can come to are either:

(a) the IDF DELIBERATELY killed a bunch of innocent palestinian women and children (and journalists they didn't like!)

The incursion and bombardment of Gaza is not about destroying Hamas. It is not about stopping rocket fire into Israel. It is not about achieving peace.

The Israeli decision to rain death and destruction on Gaza, to use lethal weapons of the modern battlefield on a largely defenseless civilian population, is the final phase in a decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.

Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps, schools, mosques, apartment blocks and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war.

It is not a war. It is murder.

When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupiers have to defend themselves against the population they are crushing. You can’t defend yourself when you’re militarily occupying someone else’s land.

That’s not defense. Call it what you like. It’s not defense.
– Noam Chomsky, Nov 17

Really serf, you can do better than that that silly (a) (b) or (c) rhetorical trickery.

The issue I called Deane on was his use of the phrase "indiscriminate bombardment" of Gaza. Indiscriminate bambardment amounts to random bombing, not caring where the bombs land or what they hit. That's not what Israel is doing. In fact your own figures prove it. You are right when you point out that approximately 50% of the Palestinian fatalities are non-combatants. (As was the case consistently throughout Cast Lead also) You are wrong when you infer from this that Israel's attacks are indiscriminate. In fact the figures prove the exact opposite. If the bombardment was truly indiscriminate (or random) then it would be truly astonishing if 50% of the fatalities were combatants. Unless of course, if 50% of the total population of Gaza were combatants, a proposition we can safely eliminate! So to get to 50% of the casualties consistently being combatants, you gotta target those combatants and/or the missile storage and launching sites and other facilities where they hang out. Of course, there is no guarantee that ALL the fatalities will be combatants. There are many reasons for this - faulty intelligence, , malfunctioning equipment, human error and so on. But the main reason is the Palestinian penchant for placing its military targets (rockets and launching sites) smack in the middle of densely populated areas.
Occasionally too, Palestinian civilian fatalites result from Hamas rockets exploding on launch or falling to earth shortly after firing. At least 100 rockets fired from Gaza during the current conflict have actually landed in Gaza, causing at least one fatality (a child) that was initially blamed on the Israelis.

The piece you've cut and pasted in its entirety from infoshop.org and attributed to Chomsky on 17th November is not just total bullshit, it isn't even an accurate quote from Chomsky at all. Well ok, the last paragraph is actually from Chomsky, a transcript of remarks he made in a 2004 documentary! The rest seems to be from an article by a guy called Chris Hedges.

As for his concept of self defence by occupiers in an accupied territory, even if you fully accepted that principle, that's not what we've got here. The Hamas rockets are mostly falling on israel proper, not the so-called occupied territories.

Does this matter? Yeah, sure it does. It amply demonstrates the tendency of the Israel hating lobby to completely disregard facts and accuracy when it comes to attacking Israel.

The Hamas rockets are mostly falling on israel proper, not the so-called occupied territories.

Does this matter? Yeah, sure it does. It amply demonstrates the tendency of the Israel hating lobby to completely disregard facts and accuracy when it comes to attacking Israel.

Why would Palestinians fire on Palestine?

The Palestinians in the Territories illegally occupied by the Israeli military, known as "The West Bank", are not attacking the Palestinians in the Israeli-constructed Concentration Camp known as Gaza.

So the Palestinians in Gaza, that are currently being murdered by Israeli Bombs, have no reason to attack the Palestinians in the Territories illegally occupied by the Israeli military, known as "The West Bank", .

You seem to be confused.

Your dissembling has reached the stage where you are now merely reduced to babbling inanities

I notice you want to ignore the Zionist plan as laid out by Jabotinsky.

At the time of Jabotinsky's articulation of his colonisation plan for Palestine no more than 3 or 4 percent of that land, if even that, was owned by Jewish people

That's what Jabotinsky was talking about - the need of the Zionists to rob all the land from the people currently living on it.

It was not possible to create a Zionist state in Palestine without first deciding that you had a right to rob as much as you could from the current occupiers. The Zionists knew it so they had to find the conditions that would allow them to justify it, or if those conditions do not exist, then to create them themselves.

The Israeli military says it has attacked the Gaza Strip 1,350 times over the past few days, as the Palestinian death toll continues to rise due to the ongoing airstrikes.

Over 90 Palestinians, including many women and children, have been killed in the Israeli airstrike on Gaza since November 14.

Three Gazans, including 18-month-old Rama al-Shandi, were killed in attacks on Gaza City during the early hours of Monday. The other two victims were identified as 50-year-old Abdulrahman al-Attar and Abd al-abbad. Later in the day two women and another child were also killed in the ongoing airstrikes.

If its mid twentieth century Nazi sympathisers you want, I'll see your Jabotinsky and raise you an Amin al-Husseini, Grand mufti of Jerusalem, Palestinian Nationalist leader and Nazi collaborator. Exiled from Palestine for his pro-German activities, he ended up in Berlin where he was warmly received by Hitler and Himmler. He wrote to Hitler commending his methods for dealing with his "Jewish problem" and seeking assistence to implement "similar methods" in Palestine. Some historians record him visiting Auschwitz though this cant be definitively confirmed. Later in the war he visited Bosnia where he raised a muslim division of the Waffen SS. In a public speech he commented that the Germans knew how to get rid of the Jews and that they had "definitely solved the Jewish problem."

Maybe you should change that moniker to PALESTINIAN ARAB NATIONALISM = NAZISM

unlike the ZIonists Palestinians didn't formulate a political ideology based on NAZI principles of blood-purity and "Lebensraum" though,

Palestinian Liberation is based on the fact that Palestinians are the inhabitants of land that Zionists have long acknowledged that they want to steal, and have been stealing from day lone of the Nakba

Jabotinsky and many other Zio-Nazis, such as ben Gurion, have openly acknowledged this truth, something which Modern-day Zio-Nazi-apologists such as yourself refuse to do -in this manner overt racist Zio-Nazis of yore are far preferable to the Modern-day dishonest Zio-Nazi-apologists such as yourself

" If the bombardment was truly indiscriminate (or random) then it would be truly astonishing if 50% of the fatalities were combatants. Unless of course, if 50% of the total population of Gaza were combatants, a proposition we can safely eliminate! So to get to 50% of the casualties consistently being combatants"

Hey...I never said 50% of those killed were combatants. I said 50% of those killed were women and children. Got it? Stop putting Israeli murder apologist propaganda words in my mouth

Estimates from hospitals in Gaza are more like 80%+ of those killed and injured have absolutely nothing to do with resisting Israel.

Jonathon Cooke, in the counterpunch (hardly an unbiased source!!) article you quote, peddles the myth that:On November 12, as part of efforts to calm things down, the Palestinian militant factions agreed a truce that held two days – until Israel broke it by assassinating Hamas military leader Ahmed Jabari. This myth has been recycled and requoted repeatedly on the web (including here on indymedia) and has been seized on by the Israel haters to (yet again) unjustly demonise the state of Israel.

The awkward facts (for the Israel haters) are as follows: On the mornng of 14th November, when this supposed truce was in effect, 4 rockets landed on Israel. Later that afternoon Jabari was killed. While there appears to have indeed been a ceasefire of sorts, it was broken by the firing of rockets in the morning NOT by the killing of Jabari in the afternoon.

actually, the problems really started when a bunch of Israeli soldiers mucking around the wall shot an innocent mentally challenged palestinian boy just out playing football.

A few days later they targetted the moderate Hamas leader then immediately posted the video on the internet amidst much gloating.

This was the same moderate Hamas leader they were in secret talks with.

Of course the palestinians responded angrily. A child was killed then their democratically elected representative was murdered. If somebody shot an american child then blew up obama in his car, you wouldn't expect the americans to take it lying down would you??

Looks like elements in government wanted to remove any chance of progress in the talks, since a military action would help the right's chances of being elected better than making peace with Hamas and the Palestinians

Have you actually looked at the photos of mutilated Palestinian children, killed by Israeli military action Contrarian. If not then why not? If so, then I must ask are you a sociopath or something? Because I think you'd have to be to not be affected by this, and still be trotting out propaganda to try to whitewash this cynical murder spree designed to help nutenyahoo get re-elected

it's now 140 palestinians dead vs 3 Israelis.

thats a ratio of approximately 47:1

is one Israeli life worth 47 palestinian women and children's Contrarian?

And those weasel words about "Hamas being responsible" and "rockets under their beds" won't cut the mustard around here anymore Contrarian. You're an apologist for child murder, plain and simple.

This analysis and timeline would seem to back up the assertion that there was a peace settlement in the works and it was obvious that rocket fire had clearly reduced to a mere trickle ( by other groups other than Hamas ) prior to the targetted murder of Jabari.

Why exactly did they target Jabari anyway?? Clearly he was key to any lasting peace arrangement if there was ever to be one. Unless of course they didn't actually want one that is!

Even "Harretz" seems to think there is something to the theory that elements on the right were better served by conflict not peace in order to get more votes.

2 fake bombs and one real one on a crowded bus that made a "bang" but somehow didn't manage to kill anyone?

Well done Shin Bet, at least there's some human life that you still respect. Pity the Palestinians and their children are not Jews - then the Psychopathic Zionists and Jewish-Supremacist Religious Fundamentalists that run Israel might see them as "Human"

We are all too familiar with the standard model employed by MSM and Zio-Nazi-shills alike when it comes to reporting the Gaza Massacres.

Or any aspect of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict for that matter. In the standard model if there's million-dollar Jet-fighters raining Missiles down on Gazans? it's all Hamas' fault. Palestinian Civilians murdered at work, at checkpoints, in their homes? it's all Hamas' fault

It's the "the Palestinian rockets" you see, those home-made fireworks.

It's apparently got nothing at all to do with the insatiable Zio-Nazi appetite for more Palestinian land (the 90% of historic Palestine which they now completely control is not enough apparently - they want it all)

It's apparently got nothing at all to do with the ever-changing and impossible-to-satisfy Zio-Nazi political demands at the mere mention of "peace",

It's apparently got nothing at all to do with the Zionist's almost constant breaking of cease-fire

It's apparently got nothing at all to do with the never-ending stream of dead Palestinians men women and children the Israelis feel it necessary to create every week of every year.

If Gazans only stopped with the fireworks all would be ok apparently, and Israelis and Palestinians could live in peace . . . . . apparently.

But we know it's not true.

We know that there is an insatiable Zio-Nazi appetite for more Palestinian land (the 90% of historic Palestine which they now completely control is not enough apparently - they want it all).

How do we know?

Because They said exactly that, quite clearly, back in the 20's and 30's.

Jewish Zio-Nazis don't just want the "occupied" territories" - it wants all of Palestine for it's Racist "Jewish" state. Naturally the Palestinians don't agree and they tend to fight back when their civilians are targeted by Jewish psychopaths.

This apparently is the great crime of the Palestinians - to fight back. To refuse to just fuck off and die quietly while Zionist racist supremacist psychopaths kill them, steal their land and murder their children.

The current crisis began on November 8th when an Israeli soldier in a helicopter gunned down a Palestinian child playing soccer; an act clearly calculated by Israel to provoke a response.

Palestinians shot at some Israeli soldiers, whereupon Israel then gunned down two more children then later, as if that wasn't bad enough, to heap injury upon bloody injury, the Israeli scum opened fire on one of the funerals.

These murderous acts were clearly calculated by Israel to provoke a response.

is something that happens regularly, carried out for the most part with complete impunity.

The Palestinians for the most part can do little to stop these psychopaths murdering their children.

The Zio-Nazi Psychopaths murder Palestinian children irrespective of how Palestinians behave - prior to the latest Zio-Nazi murder-fest in Gaza, 78 Palestinians, many of them children and most of them completely innocent civilians, were killed in the past year by the Zio-Nazis.

These 78 Palestinians were for the most part killed when no rockets were being fired from Gaza - so clearly "Hamas rockets" have little to do with whether or not Palestinians will be killed by Zio-Nazis, and all Israeli and Zio-Nazi-Apologist statements to the contrary are clearly nothing but lies

We rightly condemn Israel , but let's remember that the zionist entity is backed to the hilt by the USA when it commits these war crimes. Let's remember also that ,like the nazis in the nineteen- thirties, the zionists have a huge ,internationally organized propaganda machine to back them up . It's not as if the various western news sources don't know about the deliberate targeting of kids playing soccer.They know what's going on , but consciously distort the truth to favour Israel . The New York Times had this sentence yesterday for example giving the zionist version of the "history" behind the Gaza attack and the Hamas response :

“The Hamas Health Ministry said Monday evening that a total of 107 people had been killed since Wednesday morning, when Israeli airstrikes began, following months of Palestinian rocket fire into Israel.”

David Walsh in a 2003 wsws article referred to the Nuremberg trials when discussing the propaganda role played by the media during the Iraq war
" The [Nuremberg] tribunal was an institution organized by the victorious Allied governments, serving in the final analysis the ruling classes of those countriies"
"Nonetheless, in their arguments US prosecutors set forth a democratic legal principle derived from the international experience of a half-century of carnage: that planning and launching an aggressive war constituted a criminal act and that those who helped prepare such a war through their propaganda efforts were as culpable as those who drew up the battle plans or manufactured the munitions."http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/apr2003/nure-a16.shtml

It’s very hard now, with many injured people coming every hour. Women and children outnumbered men, especially with the new wave [of attacks] targeting houses and civilian buildings,” said Ibrahim Jirjawi, a nurse on the orthopedic ward, who has worked here for seven years.

So far more than 139 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli bombardment, according to the Ma’an News Agency (“Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 2 children, 12 others”).

He said the number of injured persons arriving at Gaza hospitals had “dramatically increased in the last 24 hours,” with more than 700 visiting hospital, 252 of them children.

The massive weapons arsenal available to the Israelis is shown in this graphic illustrating the different types of weapons available to Israel and Palestinian groups.

The massive disparity between the two is obvious.

Check out the infographic below to review the most significant weapons being used in the conflict and their respective ranges.

N.B.: Not shown in graphic below: Israel's arsenal of Nuclear Weaponry, estimated by many to number at least 300 warheads

As stated here already: Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps, schools, mosques, apartment blocks and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war.

It is not a war. It is murder.

When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupiers have to defend themselves against the population they are crushing. You can’t defend yourself when you’re militarily occupying someone else’s land.

"That’s not defense. Call it what you like. It’s not defense."
– Noam Chomsky, Nov 17

Israeli Weapons and Army, compared to Palestinians Weapons and Frorces

Even as a ceasefire was announced, the death toll was rising amid strikes on targets with little apparent military value

Gaza City
Destroyed government offices in Gaza City. Many had moved to the city after Israeli leaflets warned of strikes on border areas. Photograph: APAimages/Rex Features

The doctors, the ambulance drivers, the human rights monitors all said it was one of the worst days. But no one could be sure just how bad until the reports from the morgues, or of funerals held without fanfare, or of the recovery of another body from under the rubble, dribbled in.

By Wednesday afternoon, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) was reporting 31 Palestinians killed in the Israeli assault over the previous 24 hours – 21 of them civilians – in perhaps the worst bloodletting yet of the military campaign against Gaza.

And even as a ceasefire was announced on Wednesday evening, the bombs and missiles were still falling and the death toll rising with a strike in the south of the enclave that killed two men on motorcycles, and bodies were still being pulled from a bombed Gaza City government complex

The latest victims included Ibrahim Mahmoud Nasser Abu Nasser, 80, and his 14-year-old grandson, Ameera, who were cropping olive trees in Abassan village to the east of Khan Yunis refugee camp when a missile shot from the sky killed them both.

There were the two 16-year-olds – Mahmoud Khalil al-Arja and Ibrahim Ahmed Hamad – who died in an air strike near the southern Gaza border. Ambulance men could not reach their bodies for hours because of the continuing air assault.

Adding to the tally was 14-year-old Ahmed Awadh Abu Olayan, who died of wounds sustained on the first day of the Israeli attack on Gaza.

The Palestinian health ministry puts the total death toll at more than 150, although officials concede they may not know about all of those killed. The PCHR says at least 90 of those are civilians, including about 30 children.

Despite the cease-fire, Israel persists in caging Gaza's 1,644 293 people (give or take - over 1 hundred have been murdered recently) in their 365 sq km concentration camp and enforcing the illegal siege.

We can only hope that in the coming days, we will see

free movement of Gaza Strip residents to the West Bank and the rest of the world;
unrestrained passage of imports and exports;
the end of the naval blockade that prevents access to Gaza's Mediterranean gas reserves and fisheries;
dismantling of the remote-controlled, watchtower-mounted machine guns;
free access to the agricultural and other land in Israel's 'buffer zone', which extends up to 1.5km into the narrow enclave, 12km across at its widest point;
and opening of Gaza's airport and sea port.

A Palestinian man has been shot dead by Israeli soldiers close to the Gaza border, say Palestinian officials.
It is the first reported killing since the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel came into force on Wednesday evening.

Towards the end of the BBC report we have this:

The BBC's Jon Donnison [he's the chap who ignored tweeted questions about the Zio-Nazis killing his Palestinian colleague's 11 month old baby] in Gaza says shootings near the border happen fairly often and do not always lead to an escalation of violence.

So: The BBC's Jon Donnison admits that the zio-Nazis regularly murder Palestinian civilians in Gaza without any retaliation whatsoever from the Palestinians.

Israel has killed a Palestinian within two days of signing a ceasefire which most people must have thought meant they would stop killing people in Gaza.

The ZIo-Nazis killed a Gazan who strayed from Gaza into, er, Gaza.

They managed to go more than a day without breaking their word and without killing a Palestinian.

A Whole day. Without murdering anyone

Imagine that.

Well done Israel - one whole day without murdering anyone, I'm sure YahWeh would be very proud of his "chosen".

Between September 2005 and September 2012 Zio-Nazis killed 213 Palestinians near the wire-fence which demarcates the Gaza/Zio-Nazi-Land border.

Of those 213 people killed by the Zio-Nazis, at least 72% [154] of those killed were positively identified as "Innocent Civilians"

The number of innocent civilians murdered by the Zio-Nazis near the Gaza border MAY be higher than 72%

The figure of 72% is a minimum percentage - it includes only those that could be positively identified as "civilian", others of those killed may also be "civilian" but not enough proof either way to say definitively

11% - [17] - of the the 154 innocent civilian murder-victims, were children.

Most of those children were just playing, as children do, when they were simply murdered by a member of the IDF murder-gang for no reason other than they were guilty of being a Palestinian in Palestine.

The majority were killed by Sniper fire - they can in no way be considered "accidents".

Indeed, Israeli courts do not consider it "accidental" nor do the soldiers that carry out such callous cold-blooded murders, and both agree that the cold-blooded murder of such children is just fine and dandy

An Israeli army officer who repeatedly shot a 13-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza dismissed a warning from another soldier that she was a child by saying he would have killed her even if she was three years old.

The official account claimed that Iman was shot as she walked towards an army post with her schoolbag because soldiers feared she was carrying a bomb.

But the tape recording of the radio conversation between soldiers at the scene reveals that, from the beginning, she was identified as a child and at no point was a bomb spoken about nor was she described as a threat. Iman was also at least 100 yards from any soldier.

Instead, the tape shows that the soldiers swiftly identified her as a "girl of about 10" who was "scared to death".

The tape also reveals that the soldiers said Iman was headed eastwards, away from the army post and back into the refugee camp, when she was shot.

An Israeli army officer, who killed a 13-year-old Palestinian girl by shooting her 17 times, has been acquitted on all charges by an Israeli military court.

Last year, Iman al-Hams walked into a security zone at an Israeli army post along the Gaza Strip border, an area forbidden for all non-military personnel. She was also carrying a backpack, which is a common carrying-case for explosives for suicide bombers.

A soldier in a watchtower saw the girl, and radioed troops on the ground. In a recording obtained by an Israeli television station, the soldier describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death." Troops opened fire.

She dropped the bag and started running. They then fired at the bag, establishing that it did not contain explosives. The recording reveals she was running away from the army post when she was shot.

An officer identified only as "Captain R" moved in for "confirmation of the killThe official account claimed that Iman was shot as she walked towards an army post with her schoolbag because soldiers feared she was carrying a bomb.

But the tape recording of the radio conversation between soldiers at the scene reveals that, from the beginning, she was identified as a child and at no point was a bomb spoken about nor was she described as a threat. Iman was also at least 100 yards from any soldier.

Instead, the tape shows that the soldiers swiftly identified her as a "girl of about 10" who was "scared to death".

The tape also reveals that the soldiers said Iman was headed eastwards, away from the army post and back into the refugee camp, when she was shot. ," which is apparently standard procedure. But Palestinian witnesses say while she was lying on the ground, Capt. R opened fire at the girl, emptying his weapon.

On the tape, Captain R "clarifies" to the soldiers under his command why he killed Iman: "This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the (security) zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed."

Captain R was not charged with her killing, rather he was charged with illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and perverting the course of justice by asking soldiers under his command to alter their accounts of the incident.

So despite not even charging the murderer with the actual murder, instead only charging him with lesser offences, and fully knowing that the "official" IDF account was a complete fabrication, the "Court" acquitted this cold-blooded murderer of all charges

During the operations in Gaza, anyone walking around in the street, your shoot at the torso. In one operation in the Philadelphi corridor, anyone walking around at night, you shoot at the torso. [Indiscriminate "Shoot To Kill" policy]

How often were the operations?
Daily. In the Philadelphi corridor, every day.

When you're searching for tunnels, how do people manage to get around—I mean, they live in the area.
It's like this: You bring one force up to the third or fourth floor of a building. Another group does the search below. They know that while they're doing the search there'll be people trying to attack them. So they put the force up high, so they can shoot at anyone down in the street.

How much shooting was there?
Endless.

Say I'm there, I'm up on the third floor. I shoot at anyone I see?
Yes.

But it's in Gaza, it's a street, it's the most crowded place in the world.
No, no, I'm talking about the Philadelphi corridor.

So that's a rural area?
Not exactly, there's a road, it's like the suburbs, not the center. During operations in the other Gaza neighborhoods it's the same thing. Shooting, during night operations—shooting.

It there any kind of announcement telling people to stay indoors?
No.

They actually shot people?They shot anyone walking around in the street. It always ended with, "We killed six terrorists today." Whoever you shoot in the street is "a terrorist."

That's what they say at the briefings?
The goal is to kill terrorists.

What are the rules of engagement?
Whoever's walking around at night, shoot to kill.

During the day, too?
They talked about that in the briefings: whoever's walking around during the day, look for something suspicious. But something suspicious could be a cane.